Researchers at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the Ernest Gallo Clinic and Research Center at UC San Francisco (UCSF) used laser light to wipe away cocaine addiction in rats, as well as, made non addictive rats addicted to cocaine.
"When we turn on a laser light in the prelimbic region of the prefrontal cortex, the compulsive cocaine seeking is gone," said Antonello Bonci, MD, scientific director of the intramural research program at the NIH's National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA).
Bonci is also an adjunct professor of neurology at UCSF and an adjunct professor at Johns Hopkins University.
The new study shows the important role the prefrontal cortex plays in compulsive cocaine addiction. If the study was to be used in human therapy, Billy Chen of NIDA, the lead author of the study said the laser light would be replaced with electromagnetic stimulation used on the outside of the scalp, in particular a technique called transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS).
Cocaine addiction is a major health problem in the U.S. and is the cause of many social loses like job productivity, cocaine-related crime, lost earnings, incarcerations, investigations, and treatment and prevention programs. A recent stats report suggests that 1.4 million Americans are addicted to the drug.
If the new therapy is found to be successful in humans as well, Chen said it could be a great discovery in the field of medicine and treatments.
The article, "Rescuing cocaine-induced prefrontal cortex hypoactivity prevents compulsive cocaine seeking" is authored by Billy T. Chen, Hau-Jie Yau, Christina Hatch, Ikue Kusumoto-Yoshida, Saemi L. Cho, F. Woodward Hopf and Antonello Bonci. It was published online by the journal Nature on April 3.
